All I Have To Do Is Dream
by King of the Ashes
Summary: The Mojave knows her as Courier Six, Cato, and on occasion they've called her Saint, but before all that, she was Julia. That was a time when she was Caesar's little princess, and her beloved Daddy could do no wrong.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: So, real quickly, this is a fill to a prompt on the kinkmeme that I really adored: "****As a young child, f!courier was Caesar's favourite daughter until one night her slave-wife/concubine mother managed to escaped the legion and took her child with her. Now all grown up (whose mother may or may not be dead), F!Courier hates everything the Legion stands for and wants nothing to do with them but is still emotionally conflicted between her childhood memories of her beloved daddy and the horrible monster that she knows that he is. Eventually though, F!Courier does come to the attention of her 'beloved daddy' and he wants her to come 'home'. She doesn't want too but will what daddy wants, will he get?"**

**How could I pass this awesome prompt up? Since this was written for the kinkmeme it might be awkwardly paced in comparison to my BEHEMOTH fics. **

"Daddy!"

She looked up at him, green eyes shining from a tan face. There was no mistaking she was her Mother's daughter, only a child and already mirroring Miriam's heart shaped face and plump lips, her unruly black waves, her sweet almond complexion. Only those eyes were Caesar's, but that was enough for him.

"Lookit what I made!"

She beamed at him proudly and held a piece of yellowed paper for him to see, where she'd filled most of the margins of the page with children's scribbles. There were what he assumed to be legionaires cheering at the bottom, a happy sun in the top corner, and a crude mimic of the bull of the Legion's flag at the center. She'd given it a happy face and had gotten most of the shapes right- a rather impressive success for someone so young- and she had drawn lines all around it like it was radiating some gold crayon aura. It was standing over an upturned, two headed bear with X's for eyes, a small puddle of red scrawls underneath it. Evidently it was bleeding from the hole the bull gored in it's side. He doubted she knew what either of those symbols represented, nor the full extent of the war they were raging, but the drawing made him smile.

"That's wonderful, little bird," he replied, taking the drawing to closer examine it. He chuckled lightly at one of the faces in the misshapen crowd, one of the few without a helmet and goggles. She had taken great care in scratching out a bald spot at the top of his head and the gold symbol on his chest. "Is this one me?"

"Yeah, that's you!" She giggled, climbing into his lap. He held her around her chubby waist, listening patiently as she pointed out each person in the crowd.

"See, that's Uncle Antony." A man with a two foot mohawk and a wild grin, accompanied by a pack of stick dogs.

"That's Silius." She did well drawing his stern face, an upside down smile and two harsh lines forming a scowling V on his brow.

"That's Uncle Joshua." He was at the head of the crowd, wielding a crooked Ripper above his head. Though his pose seemed triumphant, she hadn't drawn him smiling, or with any emotion really, just a blank face.

"And that's Uncle Lucius." He was the most detailed of them all, with silver and black swirls making up his hair, and his armor (although still drawn in a childishly simplified way) was nearly perfect down to the letter. She even tried drawing him with actual eyes, instead of the different colored dots she used for everyone else. Clearly she devoted more time to him than most of the other legionary.

Caesar kissed her on the head, hugging her against him.

"You did very well."

The two sat awhile and appreciated her drawing of the bull and the bear, Caesar smirking whenever he caught little details she'd taken the time to include, like the tattered NCR flag discarded in the background next to a cracked Ranger's helmet, or the crying President Tandi on the other side. All images she didn't truly understand, but knew belonged to the enemy, to the bad people that wanted to hurt her and her Daddy.

Her little face suddenly became very serious as she looked up at him.

"Daddy," she began in a small voice, "That's how it's gonna be...right? You'll beat the Nisur?"

She was good at drawing propaganda against them, not so much at pronouncing their name.

"Of course, darling." He had always been sure of his victory. Defeat wasn't something he thought possible. But Julia had the sense enough to worry for him, and sometimes it made him wonder if her fears were really unfounded. While the men outside his tent fought and bled and died, they needed no convincing that their cause was true, their victory assured. Strange that the six year old was the one to voice doubts. He rubbed a hand down her back.

"It'll be just like this," he assured her, prodding her playfully in the baby fat at her stomach. "When's the last time you saw a bear beat a bull?"

She squirmed uneasily.

"I've never seen a bear...or a bull...I dunno' which'd win."

Her eyes abruptly brimmed with tears, and she curled up against him, hugging him around the waist so tightly her face scrunched with the effort.

"I love you, Daddy...I don't want them to hurt you..." She buried her face in the fur shawl around his shoulders.

"Don't think like that," he said quietly, sifting her bouncing curls through his fingers.

"They can't hurt me. Nothing can hurt me."


	2. Chapter 2

The smell of sweet dust and the desert night turned sour with rot the closer they got to Nipton. They had seen the smoke from the Mojave Outpost, but apparently the NCR soldiers there held out some hope it hadn't been razed to rubble. Why else would they ask her to trek all the way down here if they didn't think she could dig out survivors? They couldn't honestly expect things to be alright.

Plumes of black smog had been ribboning over the town for days. It was obvious what happened.

Even in the dark of night, live embers smoldered in the ruins of houses, almost enough to light their way as they walked. Rex growled hazardously, slowing to a soft padding pace alongside Cato as she made her way down the debris strewn street. His ears flattened, and Cato pressed the back of her hand against her nose to try and block the scent of decay. It was an all too familiar smell, and she knew what it meant even before she saw the light from a fire pooling around a corner, falling on the row of crucified men. Some dead, some dying, all lazily nailed to crosses by their hands and feet, skin splitting with blisters and red from the heat of the Mojave sun baking them where they hang.

Her back against the wall of a mostly intact general store, she slid along it's length, carefully peeking around the corner to the fires erected on either side of the Nipton town hall. Men in dented armor of hard plastic sat on the steps, laughing to each other in an uproar. It was a congregation of goggles and scarves and feathered helmets, each less differentiable than the last, but she knew their ranks and some of their names. A decanus, a handful of recruits, veteran legionary scattered among their numbers, and the solitary coyote helmet of a frumentarii. That one she definitely knew. The boy from the Fort with the sad eyes.

She stepped out, saddling her shotgun on her hip. Rex knew this meant no fight, and tipped his head at her in confusion, ears flipping back up. She was already at the center of the street by the time they noticed her, standing between two crucified men. One croaked something to her, but she knew there was nothing she could do for him.

Coyote was the first to step forward and regard her, after muttering to the others.

"You there! Come closer!" She obeyed without a word, the frumentarii walking to meet her in the middle. In the dark, it was impossible to see his eyes behind the tinted goggles. She still felt them flicker across her face, and saw the hard edge of his mouth. He was considering something. There was a moment he didn't speak.

"I've been waiting for days for some profligate to come through and stumble upon all this. I was going to tell you to spread word of the Legion's triumph over the whores of this city," he said, crossing his arms. "I get the feeling you don't need me to tell you such things."

The fire at their side swept towards him, and for a moment she could see his eyes staring half-lidded at her from behind the wall of tinted plastic.

"Hello, Julia. My, you've grown."

No one called her that. Julia was Julius Caesar's daughter, and as Cato's Mother had told her at a young age, when she demanded she change her name, Julia died millennia ago. No matter how much Edward Sallow wanted to recreate the past, it would never change the fact that the real Julius Caesar drowned in his own blood, the real _Julia_ Caesar had died in childbirth, and both of their bones were long ago reduced to ash, their legacies reserved for books that barely survived the bombs which no one has read for centuries. Cato the Younger was dead as well, but her Mother took perverse pleasure in renaming her daughter after a man who so despised Caesar, he ripped out his own bowels rather than live in a world where the tyrant sustained power. It was a dark joke Cato carried throughout her life, but her Mother had a dark sense of humor like that, and there were worse names she could have chosen.

She stared back at the frumentarii, shifting her weight to one hip.

"My name isn't Julia."

"Yes, I wondered if your whore mother would keep calling you that."

Her brows twitched.

"Don't call her that."

"That would be 'former whore' now, wouldn't it? I suspect she's not the prize she once was."

His voice was as spiritless and cold as it had always been, that was one thing about Vulpes Inculta that never changed, even through the years that Cato had been away from the Legion. He tapped his temple. "How _is_ she, by the way? Caesar has been offering quite a hefty bounty on her head for many years, it would be a pity if she died before anyone could collect."

"Sorry to disappoint you then. She passed away last summer." A lie, Miriam lived somewhat happily in a somewhat cozy farmhouse in a secluded part of the desert with a prized goat, a few Brahmin, and an ugly cat.

Vulpes swallowed it never the less.

"Hm. Shame." He paused.

"Your Father has been looking for you as well."

Her fingers twisted against the butt of her gun. She expected that much. Of course her doting Father wanted to find his child, his only child that survived infancy or was birthed by a free woman, the only child that swallowed his lies about the atrocities the Legion committed. Cato felt her jaw tighten.

"I'll give you ten seconds to get out of here, Vulpes. You and your gaggle of freaks have gotten your jollies, there's no one left to burn, and all the ones you've crucified will be dead by morning. There's nothing for your here. I'll...tell the NCR what happened here. But not because you asked me to. They need to know." She shouldered her weapon at head level with the frumentarii, her emerald eyes hard as stone. "If you don't leave, I'll just tell them raiders sacked the place. They may not believe me, but I'll make sure some doped up Fiends get the credit for your work here."

"Making threats to a 'gaggle' of well armed men twice your size. You really have grown, little bird." The pet name was like nails raking on her spine. And in truth, she was as tall as any of the men there. "Pray tell, why would you be so generous as to _allow_ us to live?"

"It's a one time thing, foxy," she muttered, "For whatever love I _used_ to have for Caesar. He'd be just torn up if I put down his favorite lap dog."

Rex growled at the first recruit to go anywhere near his weapon. She stared down Vulpes, knowing her eyes were locked with his even if his were hidden. She couldn't take them all at once, but she could try, and she would give ten times what she would take. Vulpes just needed to weigh his losses against his pride. Either way, she knew he would never attack the daughter of his commander, no matter the annoyance it caused him to let her go unharmed.

"Very well," he sighed after considering her for a few seconds, hooking a thumb into his belt, "Our orders were not to pick petty squabbles with profligates. Ensure word spreads about what happened here, and our work will be done. We will return to the Fort." He flashed her a toxic smirk. "I'll say hello to Caesar for you."

She cocked the gun with a violent snap of her arm, returning it to rest at his forehead.

"Go. And don't say a word about me to him." She knew this was a futile request, but couldn't stand to send him off without it. She needed to tell him _something,_ if only to feel like she had some control over what he told her Father.

Vulpes gave her that collected look of seething hatred as he walked past her, waving away the barrel of her shotgun as though swatting at an annoying fly, and his men fell into formation behind him. She trained her weapon on their backs the entire way, never letting her stern look falter, allowing Rex to growl to his heart's content and snap at their shadows. She remained frozen, finger on the trigger. Until they melted into the shadows where the fire they had started gave no light.

Cato let out the breath she had been holding long after they were out of sight.

For years, she was able to avoid most of the legionary that knew her face. She'd run across some, the only one worth note being Joshua Graham, and he hadn't recognized her. Then again, she didn't really recognize him either through the bandages.

Back then, she was just another of Caesar's children running around the Fort, though she had been the only one in finer clothes than rags or recruit's armor. Very few would know her face if they saw her. But of course, her legendary streak of bad luck continued by running her into one of a handful of men that could see past her age back to the little girl from Caesar's tent.

Rex gave her a solemn _aroo?_ as she sank to the steps of the town hall, burying her fingers in her hair, subconsciously flitting over the bullet scars in her head. Maybe if she ran, she could catch up to Vulpes and stop him before the word reached her Father that she was still in the Mojave. Maybe she could get Boone, they could track the group before they made it back the Fort, pick them off from a distance. He wouldn't ask questions if it meant he got to kill Legion. She wouldn't have to tell him why Vulpes couldn't be allowed to make it back, the fact he wore the red of the Legion would be enough for the sniper.

She glanced up at the shadows of crucifixes, shuddering in the uneven light of the fire and throwing rigid tentacles across the cracked pavement.

Was is it so wrong the sight made her nostalgic?

She wanted to be angered by it, to swear vengeance for the men on them and make Caesar pay for every single one. But her earliest memories were of standing under the great wooden crosses in his arms, and she could never eradicate the ache for home she felt when she saw their shadows on the sands. Just like she couldn't help the little voice in the back of her head that told her to let Vulpes go, let him tell Daddy where she was, and let him come and take her home.

It would always be her home. That was something she could never shake.

Miriam could tell her the awful truths about what they did, but she could never rewrite her earliest memories of a kind face smiling at her under a gold and crimson bull.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Super short Caesar chapter**

"She what?"

Vulpes, never one to back down to Caesar's furious twist of a brow, crossed his arms behind his back and repeated.

"She was in Nipton. She didn't seem all too pleased to see us."

Caesar shot out of his throne, fists clenched at his sides.

"Why didn't you bring her back you incompetent fool?"

"I didn't believe we could bring her back...undamaged," Vulpes nearly sighed, seemingly bored by the repetition of events. Caesar would have punished him for that, but that was his default mood. "She held a gun on me. She was prepared to fight. I thought it better to let her go and take her by surprise next time than possibly injure her this time. I thought you would be pleased, mighty Caesar. We know she's here. We can find her again."

"You were too scared to pick a fight with a child," Caesar growled, displeased.

He sank back, with a defeated sigh, a throbbing warning of a headache rising to the forefront of his skull. He tried to knead the pain away, but it was verging precariously on the border of a migraine.

"You're absolutely sure it was her?" This hadn't been the first time someone came to him with information about Miriam and the daughter she stole away. For weeks after they left, men came forward with any black haired woman and child they came across to say they'd captured his runaways. A few brought only severed heads. Those ones he'd made carry the rotting skulls around their necks for weeks afterwards for their idiocy.

"Absolutely," Vulpes secured firmly, "Dark skin, black hair, green eyes. Her mother has renamed her 'Cato', but she still bears the scar on the left side of her brow."

Caesar's pain ebbed slightly, as did his stern expression. The scar she'd gotten when she was only a baby. Antony's imbecilic mongrels knocked her to the ground when she was nearly a year old and a pebble imprinted on the soft tissue in her forehead.

His hand still clinched into a fist.

"Then why are you standing there? Find her, and _do not_ let her slip through your fingers again, Vulpes. You know I don't tolerate failure twice."

The frumentarii bowed curtly and was gone.

Though he normally would have hesitated diverting valuable resources and men to anything but the war effort in times like these, this was a chance Caesar could not waste until after the Second Battle for Hoover Dam was over. That was how he lost her the first time. Miriam used the catastrophic failure at the Dam and the subsequent chaos at the camp that night to run, and she still had her claws in his little girl, he was sure of that. She would never be his again unless she was liberated of that woman.

_Cato_, he thought bitterly.

An unfitting name for his child, and one he was sure was just a ploy to enrage him. She was prone to historical barbs whenever she was sore with him. His concubine was too well-read for her own good at times. Always had been.

That had been his draw to her at first, she was a whore with a beautiful mind to match her body. She knew not only of ancient Rome, but the histories of early man, civilizations before and after Julius Caesar's reign. She'd beg to him in broken Latin sometimes. He always wondered why she didn't put her knowledge to better use than seducing men.

"Easier to make a living on your back than your trivial knowledge of dead societies," she had told him once.

He rested his chin in his palm, suddenly curious if Julia inherited her mother's silver tongue and bald-faced wit since he last saw her. As furious as Miriam's witticism made him at times, it made her strong, her gaze defiant even after he'd strike her for her impudent remarks. He admired her for that. It was only fair that his daughter was strong like that too.

Although it sounded like she was already strong. He smirked, trying to imagine his timid little bird holding a gun on the imposing frumentarii with enough vehemence to frighten him into retreat with his tail between his legs.

The image made him laugh aloud, startling the praetorians at the mouth of the tent.


	4. Chapter 4

The Tops.

The noise of weathered cards hitting tables and ancient slot machines cranking and pouring caps gave her a headache the instant Cato entered the casino for the first time, and it was no better on the way out. It didn't help that the second time she was constantly wiping away the blood pouring down into her ears where a bullet from one of Benny's hitmen had bitten into the flesh near her temple, leaving her sense of hearing almost non-existent for a few minutes. That would make this the second time that son of a bitch tried to shoot her in the head, and she was getting sick of it by now. She drew back her hand to look at the red slicking her fingertips and sticking clumps of hair together.

"One trick pony if ever I've seen one," she muttered to herself.

And after she'd gone out of her way to offer her forgiveness. She came into the casino with the intention of getting answers for what he'd done, and she got them, more or less. But now she was beginning to think he had the same plan if she forgave him as he did if she had sought vengeance, which was to try and kill her again. Only this time he didn't have the guts to do it himself. She wasn't sure which she found more insulting; the fact he planned on murdering her even after she gave her word she wouldn't hurt him, or that he didn't think she was worthy of getting shot by him personally again. Both stung equally, she decided on the elevator ride down. The head wound stung worse.

Cato sighed as she came to the ground floor.

"Sure know how to make a girl feel worthless, Benny boy. Ya' just shoot me and boot me."_ Fool me once, etc. etc._

She found Boone nursing a bottle of scotch and failings resplendently at the blackjack tables, and took him by the arm as she stormed out. She felt his eyes on her behind his sunglasses while they walked. Or _she_ walked, half-dragging him behind her.

"Your head's bleeding," he commented plainly.

Cato grunted. Boone didn't press.

It was an unspoken agreement between the two that little and less would be said if either gave a brusque noise like that, the two having a mutual understanding of each other and the need for silence at times. She didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't push, and vice versa. It was a blissful arrangement born when both realized how little the other liked talking.

They burst back onto the Strip, Boone finishing off his drink and chucking it carelessly away, and Cato looked around to see now no sign remained of the greasy head of black hair she searched for. Nor the tacky suit. Nor the stupid fucking handsome face. With a violent raking of her hand through her hair, she released the sniper and stomped into the street, black curls bouncing when she swung her head back and forth looking for _him. He_ didn't appear of course, and she spat disgruntled curses as she wheeled back over to the NCR sniper.

"Son of a bitch...Come on, he can't have gotten far."

Boone stopped her with a tug on the wrist. She riveted on him, about to growl angrily, when his fingers brushed back her hair over the wound in her head. He retrieved a bottle of water- the good stuff too, none of that irradiated green stuff- and handed it off to her.

"They've still got our weapons," he pointed out.

Right. They confiscated their weapons when they arrived, all but the ones she'd hidden in her boots of course, but the larger of their weapons remained at the front desk. Cato heaved a sigh and waited impatiently while Boone reentered the casino to recover them. Normally he would have avoided speaking to anyone on his own. She was thankful he didn't make her go back inside.

While she awaited him, she tended to the clipping wound in her temple. On the exact opposite side of the pale scar from the first time Benny shot her, she noted with a mixture of spite and amusement at the symmetry. She set a small compact mirror on a chest high wall, pouring a sparing little water into her palm, then pressing the bottom of her hand to her head to let it trickle down into the wound and wash away the blood caking her face. The green in her eyes had turned red where vessels had broken from the shockwave of the shot and pooled blood into her cornea as well as the whites of her eyes, and under the layer of warm stickiness coating her head, there was already an ugly bruise flaring down around the left side of her face. She certainly wasn't going to win any beauty pageants anytime soon.

After slipping the needle of a Stimpak into the flesh just on the edge of the wound and injecting herself, the gauge attached to the syringe hissing softly as she did so, she haphazardly stitched it together in a matter of minutes, as she was accustomed at this point to working quickly, then applied a small square of gauze. Red quickly bled through the white after no more than a few seconds of resting against the bullet graze like ink seeping into paper. Still, it staunched the bleeding for now.

Her self-treatment went largely unnoticed, you could see people tending bullet holes in their bodies on every corner in Freeside, and for all it's flashing lights and bright colors, the Strip was much the same. She was almost surprised when a figure in a dusty suit bothered to pay attention and approached her.

"Nasty looking injury. Shame it should mar such a handsome face."

Cato's hands stilled in the middle of brushing over the fresh gauze. The familiar voice made her stomach turn.

"If you don't get out of here within the next five seconds, Vulpes," she hissed, stubbornly refusing to look up from the mirror, "You're ending up a stain on the pavement."

He leaned against a pillar beside her, arms crossed.

"Such a harsh welcoming, sweet Julia. Even when I come with gifts."

"Unless the gift is Caesar's head bound up in ribbon, I don't want anything from you." Her gaze darted to the reflection of the Tops' door, silently praying Boone didn't choose this moment to emerge.

"I've got something far better," he replied. His voice was thick and sickly sweet as ever, like honeysuckle and arsenic. And he was dangling something, Cato realized, something shiny that caught the light and sparked in her peripheral. Despite her insistence on ignoring him, the object was shining directly into her eyes and making it difficult to focus on anything else. Wincing, she glanced at him, trying to look at him without actually seeing him.

He held the leather cord of a necklace for her to see, the symbol of the bull she knew and loved so well dancing in silver on the face of a coin, dented around the edges, it's hooves dashing a phrase in Latin.

"So the men recognize you again."

Cato pushed back her mess of hair, cursing herself for the tingling sense of _rightness_ when she looked on the familiar bull. She hoped to distance herself from the irritatingly collected soldier, but this was difficult when every muscle ached to reach out and take the memory of home. She knew she would regret it if she didn't accept it. She would regret it more if she did. Sensing her apprehension with the gift, Vulpes made the decision for her, moving to her back to pull the coin over her head and rest at the base of her slender throat. A part of her wanted to drive a knife in between his ribs for the gesture. Why she didn't do just that, even she didn't know.

"Consider what I've said," he offered, "We all miss you so terribly, sweet Julia."

She met his words with stony silence, holding a breath tightly at the bottom of her lungs until the frumentarii had turned and left, and for a moment longer after that. Only when Boone reappeared a minute later, arm full of ammunition, rifles, and an ill maintained sword or two, did she finally release the tension in her chest.

The coin kissed her skin in a terrifyingly sweet way when she stuffed the prize into her shirt and out of sight, turning to the sniper to collect her weapons.  
He couldn't know what had just transpired and she couldn't tell him. Boone would never understand her reasons for taking the token of Caesar's love, nor would he stand for her to accept his invitation. He was single minded when it came to his conviction of hating the Legion. He had every right to. Boone's was one more horror story in the Mojave that showed just what her former family was capable of. She looked up at the hard edges of his face and the set of his jaw and reminded herself that the men who now called to her had stolen the one thing he cared for, forced him to do something horrible in the name of mercy, that they were to blame for his misfortune and heartache.  
But the weight of the coin laying against her chest was a strange euphoria, and it was hard to see past it to the cloying familiarity calling to her to remember the lessons Miriam, and indeed the entirety of the Mojave, had taught her.  
Home called to her in that little silver coin.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Forgot to thank all you lovelies for the reviews, so I'll thank you now! Kyu, I'm sorry these are so short I knooooow but this is being written for the kinkmeme and it only allows around 3,000 characters a post and since I'm trying to avoid a hundred part fill, the chapters will be extremely short. It's honestly killing me not to make them longer but think of them as short sweet and to the point. /**

A solid smack against the back of her head made Julia's chin bang against the butt of her gun.

"Not like that. You'll dislocate your shoulder when that thing kicks back if you rest it against the joint. Like this." She waited with obedient patience as Mama adjusted her arm, nestling the worn smooth stock a few centimeters to the left from where her arm connected to her shoulder.

"Mama, it's heavy..."

Jul- (_No_, she had to remind herself, her name was _Cato_ now. It wasn't as pretty as Julia.) Cato's upper arms shook weakly under the weight of the bolt-action rifle she held aloft.

"They don't come in child sizes." Her voice had a certain edge to it these days that made her shrink back whenever Mama spoke. Where there had been gentle chastisement before when she made a mistake, now there was a coarse chafe for her smallest faults. She didn't wear pretty dresses anymore either, just jeans and cotton shirts, and she made Julia rip up some of her dresses when she was teaching her to make tourniquets. She either shredded all her nice clothes or got them dirty sitting on the ground.

Mama sank on one knee into the dirt behind Cato and held her elbow to keep her from dropping the weapon, the other wrapping around her to guide the hand on the trigger. Six bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla and one of Nuka Cola winked in the mid-morning light a few yards away, set on the roof of a rusted out shell of a car.

"Remember what I said about breathing," she prompted, silently directing her by expanding her chest against her back to remind her.

Ju-_Cato_ complied, taking a deep breath as she lined up the sight of the weapon to train it on a Sunset bottle in the middle. Take a breath, let it out, take half a breath, hold. She held it even as the gun recoiled and battered her in the arm and chest, before finally releasing it in a whimpering exhale when she heard the shot loudly pierce the bottle and shatter it.

"Ow..." She tried to lower the barrel of the rifle, sniffling as the pinching sensation in her arm brought tears to her lashes. "Mama, I don't wanna' play guns no more!"

The arms around her took her by the shoulders and whirred her around to face the stern woman behind her.

"This isn't a game," she said, a voice like steel and her fingers digging white into Cato's arms. "You need to know how to do this. You need to learn to protect yourself. This world will try to eat you, little bird. Daddy may have been content to have you sell you off to some decanus, never teaching you how to raise a fist to a man, but that's not what I want for you. He can't protect you, your husband can't protect you, those old rusted walls can't protect you, the Legion can't protect you. When they crumble, you'll crumble with them if you don't learn this."

"That's a lie!" She stumbled away, wrenching herself free of the hands cutting into her skin, hugging the rifle against her and letting the tears fall unabashed down her face. "You're a liar! I want to go home, take me home right now, I want to see Daddy!"

Ammunition clattered to the dirt when Mama stood, throwing Cato a package of sharp tipped bullets.

"Go find him then. See how far you get."

She didn't get far.

By the time night fell, Cato was starved, dirty, and skinned from knees to elbows from trying to climb over jagged outcroppings around the farmhouse. Her clothes were dirty and ripped, her throat parched, her back sore from carrying the bolt-action rifle slung across it, and she had to cut clumps of hair out of her scalp with the pocketknife she'd taken when her long tresses got hopelessly entangled on a snagging tree jutting out the crags in a hill.

Mama had never been far behind, and when she finally succumbed to exhaustion, she was there to scoop her up and return her to the house.

She was sore and weepy the next day, but it wouldn't be long before she relented to the training.

Every day after that outburst, she was taught the horrifying actualities about her beloved Daddy, and every day after she learned them all, she was reminded. Until the knowledge of the Legion's practices, the rapes, the slavery, the crucifying, became bleakly woven into her mind amidst the memories of Caesar, her home, and the joyful childhood she spent with them, unaware of what went on just outside her sequestered little world


End file.
